The Office of the Ombudsman has suspended for 9-months the president
of the Pangasinan State University (PSU) and the school's Campus
Executive Director (CED) in Binmaley town for arbitrarily dismissing a
faculty member and withholding his salary.

In a 10-page decision, the Ombudsman found PSU president Dexter
Buted and PSU-Binmaley CED Marcelo Gutierrez Jr. guilty of
oppression.

The decision was signed by Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales on Nov.
17 and was received on Jan. 16 by the complainant, Ricardo Tapia,
through official mail.

Buted and Gutierrez could not be immediately reached for
comment.

In a complaint filed on April 27, 2016, Tapia, a PSU-Binmaley
faculty member, accused Buted and Gutierrez of conduct prejudicial to
the best interest of service, grave misconduct and oppression.

Tapia said Buted and Gutierrez had forced him to comply with his
reassignment to the PSU campus in Urdaneta City despite a pending appeal
he filed at the Civil Service Commission (CSC) regional office in San
Fernando City, La Union province.

'[Buted and Gutierrez] did not wait for the finality of
[Tapia's] appeal when they withdrew his teaching load for the
semester, erased his name from the biometrics machine, withheld his
salary and dropped him from the rolls,' the Ombudsman decision
said.

Tapia used the visitors' logbook and his daily time record to
document his attendance at PSU-Binmaley.

In their joint counter-affidavit on Sept. 1, 2016, Buted and
Gutierrez argued that Tapia's reassignment was made 'in the
exigency of service' and with the approval of the PSU Board of
Regents.

Of the eight PSU faculty members transferred to different campuses
at that time, only Tapia defied the order, the two PSU officials
said.

Buted and Gutierrez also said Tapia was dropped from the roll of
employees for his absence without official leave after the CSC regional
office dismissed his appeal on March 21, 2016.

But the Ombudsman decision concluded that Tapia 'was not absent
for more than 30 days' when Buted 'arbitrarily dropped [Tapia]
from the roll of PSU employees.' /cbb

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